Lync 2013 Keeps Your Voice Mails Home

We continue to be impressed by the new features and functionally of Microsoft Lync 2013. Keeping your voice mails home is another one of those features that doesn’t disappoint. If you’re a fan of Lync’s simultaneous ring or call forwarding features (I use it all the time), you may have had messages delivered on your cell phone’s voice mail if it was off or without signal. That’s because your provider’s voice mail system picks up immediately instead of ringing to your phone, so Lync just does its job and passes the call along. This creates an inconsistency in the Unified Messaging solution and can be frustrating, especially when you’re on vacation or overseas and other places where you rely mostly on e-mail for real-time communications.

Lync Server 2013 has an enhancement that practically eliminates these situations, detecting when your provider’s voice mail picks up instead of you and has the voice mail delivered to your Inbox instead. It is called Voice Mail Escape. The way it works is quite simple: if the forwarded call gets picked up immediately (or way too quickly), Lync assumes your provider’s voice mail picked it up and stops attempting to reach your cell. Lync then keeps ringing your desk and eventually goes to your Exchange Unified Messaging voice mail. Better yet, this feature can be enabled or disabled on a per-user or per-site basis, giving you the flexibility to exclude users who may be incredibly quick on the answer button, or just don’t mind their messages going to their cell phones at all.

Here’s the quick link on how to configure Voice Mail Escape on your Lync 2013 infrastructure.